


talk to me nice

by theseourbodies



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Canon - Anime, Character Study, Episode Tag, Episode: S1e19 新しい挑戦へ | On to a New Challenge, Episode: s2e18 負けるかよ| Like I'd Lose, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 12:10:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17425625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseourbodies/pseuds/theseourbodies
Summary: For almost as long as Daiki’s had basketball, he’s had Momoi Satsuki.[alternate title: dunk hard]





	1. don't talk to me at all

**Author's Note:**

> a bit of introspection and two episode tags because i am THOROUGHLY in sports anime hell

For almost as long as Daiki’s had basketball, he’s had Momoi Satsuki. He thinks he loves Satsuki; that’s probably what this feeling is. She leads, and he follows; when he leads, she follows back. They’ve never had to talk about it much. Before high school, they never argued about it at all. Maybe part of why it works is that they grew up spending all of their free time together, but as they get older, he knows the truth of it: they’re this way because that’s the way that she wants them to be.

There’s something that no one's ever liked about the fact that Satsuki is a girl and Daiki is a boy. People used to give her shit about how much time they spend together. People still give him shit about it, but it’s not really the same kind of trash talking; as he’s gotten older, he’s figured that out, too. It hadn’t bothered her much when they were kids. Satsuki and Daiki hadn’t cared much for anything but basketball, anyway, let alone other kids who didn’t even  _play_. But when they’d gotten to middle school, it hadn’t been the same. It wasn’t that they had changed, though they had; it was that suddenly everyone else had realized they had changed, too. When they got to Teikou, Satsuki hadn’t just been Momoi Satsuki anymore. Their classmates, their teachers and upperclassmen—everyone seemed to think she had ruined their lives just by existing. People wanted everything from her and nothing to fucking do with her all at the same time.

People started calling Daiki a  _monster_ in middle school. They called Satsuki a lot of things, but the crowd favorite was usually  _slut._

He thinks that probably never stopped, but he can’t be sure. Sometime in between starting his last year at Teikou and the first day at Touou, Satsuki had stopped talking to him about things like that. He doesn’t think it’s a coincidence; it was probably around the same time that, despite all the people who called her names and tried to touch her just because of how she looked, he became the only person that could really make her cry.  


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> s1e19 episode tag

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so according to the wiki, momoi doesn't refer to aomine as Dai-chan until after the loss in season 2, but i didn't remember that-- so please just take it as her being deliberately rude, i guess, sorry

After beating Kuroko’s fluke dream team back into obscurity where they belong, all he wants to do is sleep. Sleep, and forget about the stiff, cold stranger wearing Tetsu’s face, tucked in the middle of a team of nobodies like he really was just some ghost they’d picked up along the way. A poltergeist, pulling their strings, possessing them and moving them where he wanted them to go; Seirin’s ball club didn’t have the same experience with that kind of garbage that Aomine did, so maybe they didn’t know why exactly they had gotten their asses handed to them today. Maybe they didn’t know enough to know who to blame.

Or, maybe they just didn’t care. Aomine certainly didn’t. If Tetsu wanted to try and play Akashi’s games, he should have known better than to play them against someone who had been there before, and who knew better than to get caught up in teams.  

He abandons the rest of Touou in their locker room, because there’s nothing he has to say to them, now. He gets a look from Imayoushi, but Aomine has no interest in answering any of the questions they have: questions about the ghost formerly known as Kuroko Tetsuya or the useless nobody he had pulled out like a magic trick. What had happened during the game didn’t matter, now; it was over, and he had won.

So: Station, home, bed, where he can finally sleep.

Instead, somehow, he ends up exactly where he doesn’t want to be, in front of another locker room door. The sign for  _Seirin_ _Academy Basketball Club_ is still up and Daiki just stares at it. All the tension he’d burned off in the cool-down builds up in him again; back, shoulders, legs, fight or flight impulses pinging up his spine as he scowls at the closed door. 

Home. He just wanted to go  _home,_ so he could  _sleep_ ,and damn Tetsu. Tetsu and his stupid face and his weak game and his weak  _team._ Aomine knows that Tetsu hadn’t been playing around with his team like Akashi had always fucked around with them. Tetsu wasn’t capable of that, no matter what his intentions were.

_Beat_ _ing_ _Aomine_. That had been Tetsu’s intention. He had meant to bring this useless team up against Daiki, and he had meant for Daiki to  _lose,_ just like that. Because he had believed in his team’s hard work, just like he used to believe in his own. That used to be the best part of Tetsu and Tetsu’s basketball, but now it makes Daiki so furious he wants to scream.

His heart’s pounding so hard, his pulse thump-thumping in his ears so loud, that he almost doesn’t hear Satsuki call his name quietly from around the corner. Looking away from the closed locker room door helps a little, but his hands still shake.

“They’re gone already,” Satsuki tells him, like he cares at all. “You just missed Tetsu-kun.”

Like Daiki  _cares._ “Whatever,” he mutters, stuffing his fists into his pockets. “Didn’t mean to come here in the first place. Got lost,” he throws out casually, like he hadn’t spent weeks and weeks of his life in this exact stadium.

Satsuki ignores him. “I wanted to see Tetsu-kun,” she says softly. “But I wasn’t brave enough to knock or to wait for him.” Her voice cracks on the last syllable. The hallways are quiet this late, and low lit for the night, but Aomine doesn’t have to see her to know that she’s crying.

He looks away anyway, hurt by it like he’s always hurt by it when he makes her cry, especially now that he’s the only stupid bastard who seems capable of doing it.

“Stop crying, Satsuki. We won.”

“Yes, you won! Congratulations, Dai-chan won! You beat your second oldest friend to the ground and then you kicked dirt into his face—oh, yes,” Satsuki snaps when he looks at her sharply. “Half the team heard what you just had to say, including me.”

His temper, which had settled, flares up again, eating at his guts. “Like I care about that! We’re the only ones who can teach one another anything, Satsuki, we always were.” Teikou had had coaches and trainers, a good-sized support staff, but after a while, none of that had been enough. They only stood a chance of learning anything new from one another—and even that had stopped eventually.

“Is that what this was about?” Satsuki asks, voice trembling, “Teaching him a lesson?”

“Of course it was,” Aomine says slowly, like he’s talking to one of his idiot teammates. “Since he didn’t learn before, someone had to teach him—he wasn’t anything without us in the first place, and he won’t be anything without us now.” Kise hadn’t managed it; Midorima hadn’t either, so here was Aomine, picking up the fucking slack again.

Satsuki gasps wetly. Aomine doesn’t care. He’s tired of this, he’s  _tired,_ he’s so tired.

 “And I don’t care what idiot prodigy he digs up—they’ll never be me, and so they’ll never  _beat_ me,” he continues, not thinking about the way her face looks in the dim light: tight, and angry, and wet. “Now, stop fucking crying and let’s just go home.”

He turns to go without another word. Any excitement from the game, the anger he was feeling—they go dull inside him again. He lets it happen. No use holding on to stuff like that, not when the day’s already done.   

After a long moment, Satsuki catches up. She always follows when he’s leading, no matter how much they fight or how many times he makes her cry.

They’re halfway to the station when she finally cracks the silence between them. “Dai-chan is important to me,” she says stiffly, “but sometimes I wish that Dai-chan was easier for me to like.”

Aomine doesn’t respond. He just yawns. He thinks about his bed, counting down the minutes until he gets there.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> s2e18 episode tag

The tips of the fingers of his left hand actually still sting. It’s not painful, just strange.

Losing feels a little like that, like a missed pass blowing past him where he’d expected the slap of the ball against his palm. Not painful; just strange. 

Daiki doesn’t know what he expected; he can’t remember the last time he lost a game. He would have to go back, way back, dig through the endless days on the neighborhood courts, playing pick-up games and doing tricks to make Satsuki laugh. After he’d joined the club at Teikou, losing just hadn’t been an option. And then, after a while, it just hadn’t been a possibility. 

He’s just glad no one’s crying. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t like any of them over much, except maybe Ryou. It doesn’t matter that their team is the closest in structure to Teikou’s ball club than any others he’s seen—experts working together to stay on the court, but not invested in one another like some clubs.

(Like Seirin’s club.)

It turns out that  _team_ must still mean something to Daiki’s rotten little heart and he doesn’t know what he would do if anyone started crying. The thousands of nightmare scenarios Daiki had cooked up to scare Kise when they were younger, about what might happen if they lost, were nothing compared to this actual feeling,  _nothing._

The captain’s eyes are red. Someone has to take responsibility. 

Satsuki doesn’t touch him much anymore, not even playfully, so when she takes his hand when the team files out of the locker room, he almost flinches. She just holds on tighter, so he doesn’t fight it, even when she pulls him away from the rest of the team.

“Dai-chan and I will find our own way,” she tells the team when they all look back—and isn’t that weird. Off the court after a game, everyone’s usually happy to see Daiki gone, even if he does take their pretty manager with him usually. He liked things that way; it just made it easier. But that was while they were  _winning_. 

Coach waves them off; Imayoushi just shrugs, says “Be safe, kids,” with a poor excuse for a smirk. Daiki’s already turning away, but Imayoushi’s not done. 

“Ah-- wait, Momoi-san,” he calls—he's not smirking anymore. Daiki catches his eye and disentangles himself from Satsuki. She stares at him, but he just steps a little to the side to face her; he knows what’s coming. 

Imayoushi’s watching him when Daiki glances at him; his mouth curls into a small smile as he bows towards Satsuki. “Thank you for your hard work!” 

In one voice, the team echoes him as they bow more or less as a unit; Daiki’s only a half second behind. When he straightens, Satsuki looks spooked—but, she’s never wrong-footed for long. It takes her barely a moment to recover; she fiddles with the hem of her hoodie and tucks her chin. She smiles for the team, for Daiki, and says, “It was the least I could do.”

To a man, they all find smiles for her, even Coach, standing at the back of the group. Daiki doesn’t, but she still leads him away anyway. He follows, because he always follows when she's leading. It’s been a while; he figures he owes her. After they split from the club, everything happens in between blinks— crossing at the crosswalk, the bus stop, onto the bus and then off again, on again and then off for the last time. Satsuki grips his sleeve instead of his hand, dragging him along relentlessly. He appreciates it. He needs the break. 

“Hey, Satsuki,” he says finally, and there’s pressure in his throat and he can feel his mouth moving but that voice can’t be his. That tight wrecked voice can’t be  _him._ “I told you, right? We’re the only ones who could ever teach one another anything. Guess I was right, huh?” 

She doesn’t look back at him, but her hand slips down to his again. He clutches it like they’re kids again, her small pale hand tucked into his. It was always like this, no matter who was leading. Satsuki doesn’t thread their fingers together. That’s not what this is about. 

“Next time,” she says, so low he almost doesn’t hear over the soft, gasping breaths he started taking when he wasn’t paying attention. She flicks her ponytail and looks at him over her shoulder, right in the eye. Satsuki’s eyes are bright in her soft face, bright and fierce. She grins with all her teeth. 

“Next time, Dai-chan and I will win.” She sucks in a shuddering breath. “But today, I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry that we lost, and I’m not sorry it was to Tetsu-kun.” 

Daiki presses his free hand to his miserable, wet face. He wishes he was capable of hating her for what she’s telling him right now, out here on the dark street while his whole life shifts around him. For an honest second, he tries. He tries to dig up the old anger, but there’s no fire burning in his gut anymore. There’s just the old exhaustion, like when they were kids, pulling bullshit on neighbourhood basketball courts with kids bigger and stronger than him for hours and hours. It feels  _good_. He hadn’t hated the feeling back then; he hadn’t been able to hate her, ever. 

_Next time._

There was a next time. He would get better until next time, but so would Tetsu’s magic trick—Kagami. Kagami Taiga. He wouldn‘t be able to help himself, just like Daiki had never been able to help improving by leaps for every other person’s steps. They’d play again, and next time, Daiki would win, but today he hadn’t won. For the first time in years, he hadn’t won. He looks up at Satsuki again—grinning through the tears on her face, her hand in his. It’s stupid, but it feels like it’s been years since he’s seen her, since he bothered to look her in the eye.  

“Yeah,” he chokes in that terrible, ruined voice. “Yeah, next time we’ll get ‘em.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah, Satsuki. I swear.”        

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the sloppy description in this chapter, i was trying for something a little choppier to get more into this good headspace

**Author's Note:**

> hit me up on the [tumblr](http://wecouldbeheroes-loverswecouldbe.tumblr.com/) trash fire if ya like. 
> 
> thank you for reading! i hope you enjoyed!


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